[webdev] Web Design Update: May 1, 2013

Wed May 1 12:40:21 CDT 2013

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 10, Issue 45, May 1, 2013.

An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web
design and development.

++ISSUE 45 CONTENTS.

SECTION ONE: New references.
What's new at the Web Design Reference site?
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/
New links in these categories:

01: ACCESSIBILITY.
02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.
03: EVENTS.
04: HTML5.
05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: PHP.
09: TOOLS.
10: USABILITY.

SECTION TWO:
11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Google Docs Accessibility with Shawn Lauriat
By Elle Waters.
"Derek: You've probably heard this before: 'Accessibility is easy'.
And there are parts of accessibility that are easy. But at the same
time, some people are tackling really tough problems, like Shawn
Lauriat who works on Google Docs Accessibility..."
http://simplyaccessible.com/article/shawn-lauriat/

Low Vision Survey Results
By Jared Smith.
"Results of WebAIMs recent survey for those with low vision are now
available at http://webaim.org/projects/lowvisionsurvey/. A few
highlights are found below. The results of our motor disabilities
survey will be available soon."
http://webaim.org/blog/low-vision-survey-results/

Accessible Forms 1 - Labels and Identification
By Roger Hudson.
"The first in this series of articles about improving the
accessibility of web page forms..."
http://usability.com.au/2013/04/accessible-forms-1-labels-and-identification/

Using a Transparent Image as an Icon Fallback
By Roger Johansson.
Sometimes designs contain button styling that is difficult to create
with CSS alone. The 'official' way of dealing with this is to either
use an image button (<input type="image" src="button.png" alt="Ok" />)
or put the image in a button element (<button><img src="button.png"
alt="Ok" /></button>).
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201304/using_a_transparent_image_as_an_icon_fallback/

Accessible Audio Descriptions for HTML5 Video
By James Edwards.
"A client recently asked me to produce an accessible video player, and
one of the features she was very keen to have is audio descriptions.
Audio descriptions are intended for people who are blind or have
impaired vision, providing additional spoken information to describe
important visual details."
http://www.sitepoint.com/accessible-audio-descriptions-for-html5-video/

Requirements for Accessible PDF part 3 - Authoring Best Practices
By Deque Systems.
"While this post is not meant as tutorial on creating accessible
content with Microsoft Word or OpenOffice, keeping the following
pointers in mind will help build accessibility right in the source
documents - this list covers a few of the most important things to
keep in mind. And as we saw in the previous posts, building
accessibility in our source document is usually better than bolting it
on top of the document once it has been converted to PDF..."
http://www.deque.com/accessible-pdf-best-practices

Be Careful While Using HTML 5 Semantics and ARIA Roles
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"HTML 5 the next generation hyper text mark-up language for developing
web pages and ARIA Accessible Rich Internet Applications for
accessibility are the hot topics in the front-end community. In the
process of making the mark-up more semantic and robust HTML 5 have
come up with new tags such as <article>, <nav> etc. On the other hand
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of W3C has come up with new roles,
states and properties to bridge the gap between the assistive
technologies and authoring tools such as article(role), navigation
(role)..."
http://www.maxability.co.in/2013/04/be-careful-html-5-with-aria/

Attorney Sues Department of Homeland Security
By Deque Systems.
"Citing Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA),
Michael Leiterman, a lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) has filed a suit against his employer..."
http://www.deque.com/section-508-lawsuit

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

CSS3 Transitions - Thank God We Have A Specification
By Rodney Rehm.
"This article is packed with a number of quirks and issues you should
be aware of when working with CSS3 transitions..."
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2013/04/26/css3-transitions-thank-god-specification/

Should Users Have the Option to Switch Off Responsive Design?
By Craig Buckler.
"There are few reasons not to use a Responsive Web Design. Unless you
have the time, budget and inclination to develop a separate mobile
site or app, RWD techniques can assist your users on mobile and older
devices. But what if a user doesn't want a mobile-optimized view of
your site?..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/disable-responsive-design-option/

+03: EVENTS.

W3C Mobile Web Best Practices
May 13, 2013 start date.
Online
http://www.w3devcampus.com/mobile-web-and-application-best-practices-training/

+04: HTML5.

Stop Standardizing HTML
By Simon St. Laurent.
"When HTML first appeared, it offered a coherent if limited vocabulary
for sharing content on the newly created World Wide Web. Today, after
HTML has handed off most of its actual work to other specifications,
it's time to stop worrying about this central core and let developers
choose their own markup vocabularies and processing..."
http://programming.oreilly.com/2013/04/stop-standardizing-html.html

Don't Let the Myths Fool You - the W3C's plan for DRM in HTML5 is a
Detrayal to All Web Users
By Kera.
"A handful of myths have become common defenses of the W3C's plan for
"Encrypted Media Extensions" (EME)..."
http://freeculture.org/blog/2013/04/23/dont-let-the-myths-fool-you-the-w3cs-plan-for-drm-in-html5-is-a-betrayal-to-all-web-users/

DRM at the W3C? Not such a Bad Idea
By John Foliot.
"The Unpopular Position"
http://john.foliot.ca/drm-at-the-w3c/

+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Responsive Layouts - How To Maintain Hierarchy Through Content Choreography
By Steven Bradley.
"One of the issues we need to be concerned with in responsive design
is how to maintain hierarchy as elements on the screen are resized and
reflowed. Trent Walton first called attention to the issue with his
post 'Content Choreography,' which showed how visual hierarchy gets
lost when columns are dropped below one another."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/04/25/maintain-hierarchy-content-choreography/

+06: JAVASCRIPT.

Quirk 3 - Normal Equality
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"Let's start with a simple rule: the normal equality operators == and
!= are so problematic that you should always use strict equality (===
and !==). Some people say that there are exceptions to this rule, I
disagree [2]. Keeping this rule in mind, we can now take a look at
what is strange about == without burdening our minds unnecessarily..."
http://www.2ality.com/2013/04/quirk-equality.html

JavaScript Best Practices
By Tim Corey.
"The use of JavaScript has exploded over time. Now it is practically
unheard of for a website not to utilize JavaScript to some extent..."
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/580165/JavaScript-Best-Practices

Node at Work A Walkthrough
By Garann Means.
"In my first article, 'Even Better In-Browser Mockups with Node.js,' I
explained why Node.js makes designing applications easier and more
efficient, and how to get started. Now it's time to see your new
design process in action..."
http://alistapart.com/article/node-at-work-a-walkthrough

Even Better In-Browser Mockups with Node.js
By Garann Means.
"Designing in the browser has all sorts of benefits, like producing
more accurate, comprehensive results and removing the extra step of
converting from image file to markup and CSS. But even sites designed
in a browser still require pasting in content, faking interactions
with the server, and creating placeholder JavaScript that isn't usable
on the live site."
http://alistapart.com/article/even-better-in-browser-mockups-with-node.js

Best of Fluent 2012: Maintainable JavaScript
By Nicholas C. Zakas.
"Nicholas C. Zakas' talk at the Fluent 2012 conference is about best
practices for keeping your JavaScript code maintainable."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-kav7Tf834

+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

The First Website
By Mark Boulton.
"Twenty years ago today, CERN published a statement that made the
World Wide Web freely available. To mark this anniversary, CERN -
together with Mark Boulton Design - are starting a project to restore
the first website and the associated assets of the World Wide Web
project..."
http://markboulton.co.uk/journal/firstwebsite

WWW Project Turns 20
By  Adrian A. Roselli.
"Twenty years ago, on April 30 1993, CERN announced the World Wide Web
project. While the web existed before then, this was the first time
that HTML's specification was opened up to the general public,
allowing anyone to learn how to mark up documents..."
http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2013/04/www-project-turns-20.html

An Interview with Karl Groves
By Elle Waters.
"As part of Knowbility's 2013 John Slatin AccessU, we are proud to
present an interview with Karl Groves-one of my co-workers, and
speaker at the upcoming AccessU. Karl works on our team as an
Accessibility Consultant and is interviewed here by another co-worker,
Derek Featherstone. They talk Vikings, testing, workshops and BBQ."
http://simplyaccessible.com/article/karl-groves

+09: PHP.

Better Understanding Random
By Mark Wilston.
"...In this article I'll give you an overview of what random values
are used for and why they're important, as well as a peek under the
hood of how they're generated..."
http://phpmaster.com/better-understanding-random/

+09: TOOLS.

GrayBit
"Relying on colors to determine page visibility and contrast can be
misleading. Converting the colors to their grayscale equivalents is a
more reliable method. By removing color's influence, you'll better
find true visual contrast...GrayBit makes it possible...GrayBit was
originally created by Mike Cherim and Jonathan Fenocchi. In April
2013, it was purchased by Joe Dolson, who now maintains, hosts, and is
continuing the project as time allows."
http://www.gray-bit.com/main.php

+10: USABILITY.

Usability Checklist
By Userium.
"Catch common usability problems before user testing."
http://userium.com/

Users' Pagination Preferences and 'View All'
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Long listings might need pagination by default, but if users
customize the display to View All list items, respect that
preference."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/item-list-view-all/

The 3 R's of Measuring Design Comprehension
By Jeff Sauro.
"...to really measure comprehension, you need to use questions that
assess users' knowledge of the policy, the product or design. We use
three complimentary techniques: measuring recognition, recall and
recounting..."
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/measuring-comprehension.php

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

Accessibility Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/accessibility.html

Association Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/associations.html

Book Listings.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/books.html

Cascading Style Sheets Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/css.html

Color Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/color.html

Dreamweaver Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/dreamweaver.html

Drupal Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/drupal.html

Evaluation & Testing Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/testing.html

Event Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/events.html

Flash Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/flash.html

HTML5 Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/html.html

Information Architecture Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/architecture.html

JavaScript Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/javascript.html

Miscellaneous Web Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/misc.html

Navigation Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/navigation.html

PHP Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/php.html

Sites & Blogs Listing.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/sites.html

Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/standards.html

Tool Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/tools.html

Typography Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/type.html

Usability Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/usability.html

XML Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/xml.html

[Section two ends.]

++END NOTES.

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+ SIGN OFF.

Until next time,

Laura L. Carlson
Information Technology Systems and Services
University of Minnesota Duluth
Duluth, MN U.S.A. 55812-3009
mailto:lcarlson at d.umn.edu

[Issue ends.]